exactly what mike said. this isn't about facebook and twitter. it's about the fire in people's hearts. the fire can be expressed through facebook and twitter and amplified through facebook and twitter, but facebook and twitter are no more responsible for the arab spring than the machine was for solidarity in the 1980s. it's a mechanism. and it's a useful mechanism, but it's not the answer. that's why, you know, i think, as you said, lots of technology, no revolution. it all depends on how it's used. >> well, john said at this council of foreign relations last week, he said he thinks it's going to be impossible for china to hold on to this much longer because of technologies. >> yes, yes. >> that you just don't have the ability to close off a country the way you once did. would you agree with that? >> yes, but, again, it's catalytic. it's not the cause of revolution. >> did you want to say something on that? >> well, just on that final sense of lorne's, i think the

point is that people have access to information now. the state can not monopolize their sense of how their country's doing, how it compares to the rest of the world. and i think that was, in fact, the primary impact of technology in the arab world and i think it will be in china as well, is that people in egypt could see that the countries their government kept telling them were their peers, india and indonesia, were just zooming ahead and they were just stuck. >> somebody who's worked on burma the last 15 years, i want to make a couple observations. first of all, we don't know what's going on there. it's transformational in some senses. we don't know how this ends. >> will we not know until the 2016 -- when will we know? the next election? >> the next elections will be a good indication. but as i say, look at the factors of change that have been factors of change over time. or the monks under pressure now, more pressure. what about the political prisoners that have been released? so we need to be very careful in how we describe what's happening. the burmese and the people of

burma don't need facebook or cell phones for them to be inspired to go against the regime. this is a regime that has had the boot on their necks for a very long time. anybody who's been to the border, and iri has worked with these people for decades, has stood with them shoulder by shoulder, which goes back to what we are and who we are as a nation. you have some of the oldest students that are still out there. >> right, right. >> and they still work for the day where they can go back. >> what's been the turning point this year? >> i mean, why this year then? why this past year? they released aung san suu kyi. we were suggesting it has more to do with china. everyone talked -- >> calculation is certainly -- what you have that i see happening in burma is you have a

recognition by others, not just taun shuay who is introspective but leaders saying our position in the world matters, our position in the region matters. so they've gone from a taun shuay led internal focus to this realization. it's like somebody popped their head up. somebody who was not in prison popped their head up and said, oh, my god, the rest of the world is out there. we're behind the curb. so i thing that's one of the motivators. but this issue of technology, what it can do in burma will be interesting to see, as it opens up. but the programs that we run, voa, radio free asia, you know, let's not forget that's what we also use to reach out. anybody who's been there know the folks in the region listen to that. so we have other means that we've been using since -- >> mike, i don't know where we are on time, but mike, i very much want to -- so much as changed since 2001 in terms of what this -- what drl does. lorne brought in programming. i had to explain programming a bit, which my eyes glaze over at the word programming, but i get it.

which is you more than just report anymore. you're going to put teeth into the notion of what human rights is. but mike, you have all these -- let me just read through this. disabilities, labor, anti-semitism, religious freedom, internet freedom, civil society, lgbt. you're busy. you're really busy. business and human rights. what's business and human rights? that's interesting to me. anyway. go ahead. tell me -- tell me what you're -- tell me about the new drl under mike posner. >> i would just say, i don't know that it's -- it's an evolve ing drl. as said this morning, it will constantly need to evolve and we just need to keep up the fight. because there's a lot of work that's not done. what is important, i think, we do lead the league, as you suggest, in generally unfunded mandates to do work. but they're important pieces. they're part of a vision.

the vision from the secretary and the president now is that when we talk about democracy, we talk about human rights, we recognize that it's a process. and the building blocks are empowering women and having the rule of law and having accountability and transparency. strengthening civil society. supporting vulnerable groups. women, children, the lgbt community. all of this is part of the mix. i'm really proud of the fact that this administration has added judy human as a special adviser on disabilities issues. that we have hannah rosenthal working on anti-semitism, barbara shaler on labor issues which is a critical piece of our agenda. it's part of the notion in addition to having elections which is obviously a critical piece of democracy, and it's the work that iri, ndi do so brilliantly, it's also these other building blocks. and i think the thing i'm most proud of, frankly, if what we've

done the last couple years is to strengthen the tissue that makes these issues more central to what the state department does. so we're working not -- there are challenges with our regional bureaus, but with nea, for example, there are many, many times when we're working hand in hand on a shared agenda that says, this is really now the policy of the united states to be smart, to be effective, as the secretary said, to have strong strategy and our national interest, human rights has to be a piece of that. >> and integrated with congress in a digit way than it once was? i mean, again, this gets back to american political will and it is an election year.

we're in an election year, where you often see -- i remember this from early reagan days. we were the new shining city on a hill and that became something that people thought allowed him to be re-elected -- well, elected the first time after jimmy carter, for example, where carter was sort of owning mistakes one might say, particularly domestically. my question for those of you, how do your sides of this job when your job has to do with political will? >> well, i think that for those of us who have been doing this for a while, we have seen the evolution that lorne and mike have talked about for this office, and the role that it

plays and the extent to which it integrated -- from our point of view, this is -- these are issues that are, i think, deeply important to both sides, we have for many years, we see the role of this office as being critical to is democratic issues around the world, particularly, and that we know that it's a difficult and as paula described, messy process, and finding consistency in what we do is not always easy. but when it comes to the work of this office and the role that it

plays and the issues that it seeks to either promote or defend, considerable political will and support and a device to ensure that this office has the capacity to really fulfill its responsibilities. it's not always been that way. this is office that we want to see has the resourceses in to do its job. >> i just want to make one comment and observation. the committee responds to the requests that the president sends up.

and one way that relationships can be improved is if the president includes in his request sufficient funding for those issues that both the executive branch and congress find important. that is an indication of a good balance that you're -- that we're talking about here. >> you wanted to address this, and i do want to ask you about this because of -- we're in a moment where we have a terrible unemployment crisis, people talk about, they don't really want to hear about the middle east right now, they want to hear about jobs, so i'm going to let you juxtapose that. you're absolutely right to fund this kind of work.

and tim made an important point that budget is important, it's meaningful, it's meaningful as a signal to the bureaucracy, it's also meaningful in practice and the fact that drl has a programming office and -- budget devoted to political and economic reform in our region, but when you tell embassies, not only am i going to kind of wag my finger at you about making sure these issues are in your talking point, but i'm going to be doing things in your country, that also changes the nature of the conversation and also the embassies start to talk about,

well, what can this money do for me and it works in a stake for democracy and human rights promotion that we didn't necessarily have before. how the political office changed the incentive structure in the nea that were working on these issues. all a sudden we started to think, what could i do in my country to get some of this money, and then i get credit for getting the money and i get evaluated on the basis of that. more broadly, though, it gets to the transformation of u.s. diplomacy, and the fact that diplomats all around the world are not just talking and they're not just writing reporting cables, they're doing in all kinds of ways and i think the democracy and human rights programming is just one arm of what secretary rice called

transformational diplomacy, what secretary clinton calls smart power, we're just doing that everywhere now. >> i think one thing worth noting is that the list of offices that you read off, the only one that i can remember that was created in the executive by the executive, was -- drl would not exist if it had. been for the hill. they all were hill initiatives, i used to say that i thought, and i had great support, i was the third guy in the room talking about human rights, after the president and secretary of state --. they were the chair and vice chair of my board of directors. but i always remembered what i had been told coming in here, which was that somebody told me the hill will be your best friends and that was true. >> the hill will be your best friends? >> because the hill in our democracy reflects the thoughts and the desires of american

people very, very well that they're elected. so i always found a huge amount of bipartisan support on capitol hill on these issues. >> that's good to know. >> we have five minutes. we'll get around to a couple more hot seat questions and then we'll wrap it up. i just want to get back to where we are today.

i find that pretty interestinga the honor lee was not allowed to attend an it was the one that drove her car on youtube. that's all she did, she drove and put it on youtube and saudi arabia did not allow her to leave. and i invited her to our spring last year for similar reasons, but this time they threatened her son. i'm going to the dark place right now, which is syria, the news out of russia, bu tin, this is a marvelous -- the drl is a wonderful thing. but have we come very far? what have we done wrong, is there nick you would ask either congress or the public what can be done differently when we face what we're facing today, the news today is really quite grim about human rights around the world, i would suggest. go ahead, mike. it's your turn. >> i take a more optimistic

view, i have worked in this field for a lot of years so i think that makes me a chronic optimist, but i actually do believe what lorne said, not only is congress our friend, but the public is our friend, the media is our friend the ngo committee, represent the true heart of the american people, these are kwushs that matter to americans, they matter deeply and there is a bipartisan consensus around these issues because these issues so much reflect our own history and who we are as a people. the world is always going to be a complicated, messy place, but it's also a place that's capable of change, again, going back to march, if you look at where latin america was in the '70s, they were almost all military governments. today there are very few military governments, if you look at the natures of eastern europe and the soviet union, in

the '8 0s, there was a sense that it would never change, it did change. you look at south africa, you look at what happened in northern ireland. this panel in these years are really dealing with the places that are really the most intractable. countries in the middle east, countries in asia. we haven't had the same notions of free press and where women have been held down for decades or centuries, and we're now in the process, we're trying to figure out how to change. we can't force it to happen, but we can help empower people who are the agents of change. that's the message of today, it's the message of what drl is about. we can't do it alone, there's a lot of allyies around the

building, including the secretary who have made it clear to these are priorities to them. these are issues that we all have to keep working on, and we won't succeed if others in this room don't keep pushing us to do the same thing. >> it's come a long way and frankly as i said before, 30 years ago you wouldn't have heard about these issues, the standards have gone up. it's also important to remember, i often tell my staff a couple things, number one, it's their country, not ours, and it's their fight, not ours. and sometimes you to have a very un-american patience. and it's going to take a while, as difficult as it was to see the images on tv. >> or not see them, or not know. there's a reason this is democracy, hue and rights and --

make it into a goc the human rights work as well. and that's why this -- cared who i was, it was lorne crane or mike pose never, whaervegs we have the weight of the united states of government if we can use it skillfully to bring to bear and for all of our problems, in whatever decade, that means a lot to a lot of people around the world. i'm told that actually -- deputy burns i think is really close, he's on his way. he's close, right? he's very, very close. i'm going to keep on talking. i'm going to give mike trouble

again. it's a lot of fun this is what you get for asking me to do this, by the way. i want to go back to tomorrow, what's unclear to me is with regard to the arab spring which is so the forefront of today's use is how -- i don't know that you address the cultural issue as much, and what your role at sabon center, it seems to me that because you're not at the state department, you might have a more vigorous approach to cultural issues, vis-a-vis some of these arab countries, couldn't you? >> look, i think it's important to distinguish, there are a lot of things that over the years have been called cultural issues. that are human rights issues. >> right. >> and global norms have shifted, we have been talking about that. so i think that expectations in these countries have shifted. i think we also have a lot more

data about the relationship between human rights and development outcomes. we have a lot more data about the relationship between democracy and political participation and development outcomes. so those things making the argument that on the basis of cultural specificity, or on the basis of religious tradition, that certain rights are less important or bond apply i think they have very shaky ground to -- arab exceptionalism was only the latest in a long string of exceptionalisms. we used to have debates in the policy world where the classic countries in latin america were cultural resistant to democracies, we used to have the same arguments about asia as harold noted. so we need to set aside the

notion that this is about culture and embrace the facts that these human rights norms are universal norms. i think one of the things that we worked hard to do in the administration while i was here and that i would give mike and secretary clinton a lot of credit for is standing on the universality of these principles, not making it about us or american tradition, but making it about the fact that these norms. >> deputy burns has now arrived, thank hecavens. >> well, it is, first of all i want to thank all the panelists for the whole day, it's been fantastic. and to bring us home, we have a deputy secretary, bill burns, who's a fantastic leader, she's a really a consummate diplomat,

one who is both principled and practical and has been a huge supporter of the work that we're doing, so i'm delighted to introduce bill burns. [ applause ] >> well, thank you very much, it really is present for all of you. i want to thank mike for organizing and for a very important look back at these transformation m periods in u.s. foreign policy. at a moment when our values and interests are so deeply entwined, i want to thank mike pose never and all of his prisk colleagues in drl for your irreplaceable contribution. drl has defined and redefined our human rights agenda for the 21st century. i also want to thank the panel

on their contribution to the evolution of the human rights policy. i have had the privilege of working with almost every panelist today. i know it is much easier to reflect on the advantage of hindsight on the issues that cause gray hairs and sleepless nights. all of us are grateful for your sacrifice and your superb contributions to universal human rights. all of us also believe that america is best off where individual rights are respected. we know that ideals and interests don't always mesh as seamlessly as we might like. and for the tough cases, it takes judgment, persistence and an ability to see both the forest and the trees in order to move our policies forward.

each of you faced decisions like this and each of you left the state department and the world a better place. by the time i joined the foreign service in 1982, drl was already iss established. the old war dominated u.s. global security interests plug authoritarian regimes and latin america who are critical u.s. partners. denouncing human rights violate fors we had to call out violat r violators by anti-month communistic -- that was not a popular policy, but it was an important attempt to put us on the right side of history. only a couple of decades later, most people in the americas live under leaders they elected with increased respect for their rights and freedoms, greater inclusion to populations too

long overlooked and a middle class that now numbers over 275 millio million. today dr -- but the goal is not to chastise, it is to change behavior. during the clinton administration, we established the human rights dialogue with china. today we hold these dialogues with many countries with which we have important relationships but deep differences on issues of rights and freedoms such as russia and vietnam. we have frank conversations grounded in our principals and we help elements in governments put in place better practices, solve problems in their own societies and become more accountable and more open to their citizens, and thanks to drl a surprising number of these essential conversations delivered results.

in 1998, drl began running programs -- improve their own advocacy and reach. after 9/11 when our government recognized that conflict and stability and -- modernize and advance human dignity. these efforts also gave rise to the middle east partnership initiative, founded in 2002 to strengthen civil society and the rule of law, empower women and youth, improve and expand education, improve economic reform and increase political participation. global -- since 2008, drl has strained and assisted more than 30,000 print, media and online journalists. in the philippines, drl -- went on to produce ground breaking reports. in pakistan, they launched the

first women's are program focusing on gender issues and got the country's first nongovernmental radio stations on the air. one of my favorite drl war stories is now lorne kramer and pat davis who now runs the global programming office in drl helped to get the -- at the time the country's only printing press was owned by the then president. it was set up by a board of directors by a printing press and launched it with enough fanfare that it was actually able to report the news. seven years able, that country witnessed the first-ever decentralization of power. i'm not implying that one printing press turned the tide of history. as is always the case, we can never precisely measure the impacts of american engagement. but when we work to put ourselves on the right side of

history, when we support citizens who are working to resolve conflict peacefully, to bring change to their societies, to create economic opportunities and to claim universal rights, we enhance our country's interests, we enhance our country's security, we enhance our country's leadership and we reflect the values and the generous spirit of american people. i have had the great honor and privilege of serving the -- and the new opening in burma, the changes that have affected the world, not just in the past two years, but over the past 20 years. maybe about ideals we hold dear and may have had our support, but in the end, they are not about us. they are about thousands of individual decisions made by the citizens and governments of sovereign nations. they are